JsARCLIGHT

What was really classic where that all four of the "Groovy Gang" were the "Scooby Crew" cross bred with '70s serial killers and wackos. "Ted" (the Fred send-up) was a caricature of Ted Bundy and his maniacal control issues and fits of rage. "Patty" (the Daphne send-up) was a caricature of Patty Hearst and her seemingly timid but complicit sheepishness. "Val" (the Velma send-up) was a caricature of Valerie Solanas and her ultra feminist, man hating mannerisms (Val even quotes the S.C.U.M. Manifesto several times) "Sonny and Groovy" (the Shaggy and Scooby send-ups) were caricatures of David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz and his infamous demonic talking dog "that only he could hear" and of course it goes without saying: Dean: Since when do hippies have guns? Hank: I dunno... maybee they're like... pirate hippies?

There are a few times when Brock questions Dr. Girlfriend's sexuality, most notably when he asks The Monarch and Phantom Limb if they've "found the scars yet". But to the best of my memory Jefferson Twilight and The Alchemist also comment on her voice when she shows up as Lady Au Pair to audition to be their arch enemy in the episode "Fallen Arches". IIRC Jefferson Twilight says something along the lines of "Do you smoke cigarettes or eat them?" Edit: I also forgot that Pete White and Billy Quizboy question her sexuality as well in the "Tag Sale, You're It!" episode. Billy muses that he heard she had a "baboon vagina" surgically installed.

That episode is "Ghosts of the Sargasso". My favorite part of that episode was the intro that quoted David Bowie songs (TVC15, Major Tom and Ashes to Ashes) nearly verbatim. As for their "being a season three", Doc Hammer and Jackson Public (Chris McCullough) have stated that Adult Swim picked them up for two more seasons, so there will be a season three and a season four. Public has begun showing snippets of season three on his live journal page "Public Nuissance" including the season three teaser reel shown at the NY Comicon.

I was actually about three or four during the oil embargo and I actually remember sitting in my mom's car waiting in line for gas. The only reason I remember it was that it was maddening for me as a little ball of energy to have to sit in the back vinyl seat on a hot day with the engine off. It was like putting a kid in an oven with the door cracked. The only way my mom could keep a lid on me was to sing songs with me. Funny the things you remember when you think...

It's been a while since I started a topic and seeing as season three of my most favorite American cartoon is slated to begin in roughly 4 short weeks I thought it would be cool if Macross World had a Venture Brothers thread. I know there have to be more Venture fans on this site... I'll kick things off with some decent conversation starters: What is your favorite Venture character, episode and bits of dialog. My personal favorite Venture character is Hank Venture, mostly because he reminds me of me as a teen... dopey and willing to say just about anything that pops in his mind. People to this day wonder if I somehow channel crazy dead people. My second favorite Venture character would have to be a tie between Doctor Henry Killinger (and his Magic Murder Bag) and The Monarch. My favorite Venture episode is a three way tie between "Viva Los Muertos!", "Love Bhiets" and "Trial of the Monarch". My favorite quotes are: Venturestien: PROSTITOOOOOOOOOOOO! Monarch: OK Poncherello, why don't you climb your tom fiddlin' ass back on your big gay bike and get outa here?

It sounds to me like you already have a good handle on your toy spending and you aren't opening your wallet for everything that comes down the pipe. It's hard to imagine for some folks but there are people out there who simply must buy things. They must get all the valkyries, they must have a complete collection of GI Joes, they must have three of everything so they can have the same toy "mint", displayed in vehicle mode and displayed in robot mode. It is most certainly their prerogative to do these things but it is a lot of "unnecessary" spending that if they cut down on, they'd save tons of money. I myself used to be like that... if I bought into a line, I had to have them all. If I liked a show, I had to have all the things from the show. If a new toy of something I liked came out even if it was outrageously expensive, ugly and all around a very bad "deal" I'd still buy it without batting an eye. It was only after I realized how much money I was wasting on this hobby that I curtailed my spending tenfold and became very scrutinizing of every potential purchase I make. Since then I've saved thousands of dollars that I would have otherwise frittered away on toys. Personally I feel there are several other people who are "like I was" out there who don't even realize it. Toy collecting can be an unhealthy addiction just as any "real" addiction and a downturn in the economy can be a good motivator to ween people off of the "toy bottle". I mean, I got to the point that I was depressed that I was a 30 odd year old man spending more on toys in one month than a family of four spent for Christmas. And then when I started adding it all up and seeing what else I could have had for all that money it really put the zap on me.

It could be a mastering issue. The master they made for the DVD release may not be "up to snuff" for a first tier big boy HD release so it may be getting remastered. Remastering takes time, especially for older film stock movies that may have degraded. After all, both Lucas and Spielberg's names are on these movies and the two of them have shown an almost notorious streak of perfectionism and double dipping in their media releases. It would not surprise me if we don't see Blu Ray releases until the end of the year or later into next year when Crystal Skull gets released into the home video market.

My belief lies in that the way to "correct" the issue is to put the people out of business or in a better case scenario get them to rethink their practices. The only way to do that is for the consumer to cease the purchase of their goods or services. The "market" exists and persists based on the the lowest pillar in it's structure, which is us, the consumers. Their actions and reactions are based on the anticipation that we will continue to spend and buy and consume. If we the consumer "rebel", then the market fails. In the end the government can only "bail out" a failing market so many times and our currency can only devalue so far. Eventually the cycle will be broken, it will either break itself or the consumer base will abandon it. It's downright arrogant accounting to believe that the influx of cash from consumer purchases will extend forever. Piss off the little man enough and he'll hang you out to dry. To redirect though my main points are more to the notion that people should not "sacrifice" or re-arrange their finances in order to afford "toys". That is kind of dumb in my mind... to restrict yourself in other, possibly more important areas, simply so you can purchase toys. I actually know people who eat ramen and scrimp and save out of their food budgets so they can buy luxury goods. I know people who never go to the doctor or the dentist because they "need" that money to make their ridiculously high luxury car payments. To me, it's all about securing your necessities first then living within your means for your luxury items. If the new toy you want is too expensive for you to afford, don't take money out of your food budget or some other important budget just to buy a toy. Part of the problem is that we all have kind of become spoiled on the "good economy" prices of yesteryear and we are in a period of adjustment when we all must re-arrange our priorities and necessities. In a sense, we the toy collectors are kind of like the SUV drivers... we "bought in" and got used to a market where our hobby was relatively "affordable" and we indulged in it, but as the winds of change blow we have to change with them otherwise we will become slaves to our SUV... or toys in this case. Edit: I also feel the need to add that a lot of folks have blurred the line between necessity and luxury so much that they sometimes forget which is which. I know several people who simply "cannot live" without a cell phone that has a hundred dollar a month plan or a uber high bandwidth internet connection, cable/satellite TV, or eating meals out most of the time. To a good degree we are all so "programmed" by the consumer society we live in that we have come to depend on our purchases too much, and it causes us emotional grief when faced with the inability to purchase more. To this degree I suppose my relative non-attachment to my material goods benefits me... I don't mind it so much when they vanish or I can't afford them. I am in the process of selling my '70 1/2 Camaro Z28 because I was going to buy something else, but with gas prices so high and the possibility of an uncomfortable future in store for my small business I'm probably just going to take the money from it's sale, roll it into a CD and wait it out.

I should probably point out before this goes too much further that discussion of politics is verboten. I personally have no issue with the discussion of economic finance and how it relates to toy prices, but this is just advance warning to keep the topic away from political discussion.

But all that "big picture" "high financial logic" talk does nothing to help the guy who wants to buy a Yamato valkyrie on his Burger King salary. The consumer en masse is just as responsible for fueling the erratic market as the people who profit from it. By and large the consumer is the main driving factor. It's a two way street... you have a supplier and a demander. One preys off the other and it's a combination of their actions that causes the effects. If no one buys anything then you don't have a market, if people demand too much folks take notice and the value of that commodity rises. There is no "universal blame" for an economic situation, there is no "one guilty party"... everyone is partially to blame. Consumers who run out and purchase beyond their means on credit or purchase some commodity excessively then complain when the market turns against them are reaping the rewards of their own shortsighted spending. You don't run out and buy a horse then complain that everyone bought horses and now the price of hay is rising. As such you don't buy tons and tons of cheap junk you don't really honestly need then whine when their price rises. All these things we are "hurting for" are luxury material goods in the end. Your life is not going to fall apart because you couldn't purchase every single Yamato toy. We Americans are just so darned sensitive to our luxurious way of life that we interpret all these little middling things as "important" to our daily lives. Yes, our currency is indeed devaluing due to events beyond the scope of the common consumer but it's kind of shallow of us to whine that our designer clothes, SUVs and collector grade hi metal uber toys are rising in price. I fully agree that we should "not be needing to cut back" but at the same time when the playing field tilts away from you, you should not be pointing fingers and asking yourself "what things can I decrease or alter so I can continue to spend on luxury items", you should simply ruck up and omit the luxury items. A minor ego discomfort in the short term reaping a more stable life. Given enough thought out spending, proper credit management at the consumer level, living within our means and restraint on behalf of everyone, consumer and "overlord" alike, many of the problems that spawn our current financial issues will self-correct given time.

When your belt needs to tighten, hobbies are the first thing to go. We should count ourselves lucky if all we "lose" is the ability to fritter money away on plastic crap. Just as they say restaurants are the canaries in the economy coal mine, trinkety hobbies are the same to collecting. When people stop eating out due to budgetary concerns, restaurants close... when people stop buying trinkety collector crap, it dries up. But at the same time it forces companies to "get smarter" when it comes to how they design, build and market their items. IMHO the collector toy market is in dire need of a kick to the teeth. Companies have been getting lazy and complacent, as have collectors. We think nothing of dumping $100 here and $100 there on repaints, duplicates and toys that would normally be unworthy of purchase... but we buy them anyway because we have to "complete the collection" or some such nonsense. Our own "addiction" and bad "good economy" habits have aided in the creation of an unstable market that will partially collapse very quickly under a widespread bad economy. Kind of like the whole SUV thing... people were just so eager to run out and buy an eighty thousand dollar land yacht that blows gas like a flamethrower when times were good, but when times turn sour that lumbering guzzling behemoth is unsupportable. If you ask me (which no one does but I show up and talk anyway) this downturn in the economy is the perfect time for many of us to ween ourselves off of these crazy stupid buying habits we have. We should learn to close our wallets more often, pass up that duplicate, repaint or repackaging. Pass up that ridiculously expensive toy, even if "we have to have it". That is the addiction talking. Then take all that money we would have spent and roll it into an interest bearing account or some stock... hell, with the stock market dropping I bet we could all pick up some good buys that will turn around once this slump is behind us. We would have "thrown that money away on toys" anyway. A few years back I took this advice and started only buying that I really thought I needed and not what I simply "wanted". I stopped buying everything just because it said "Macross" on it, et cetera. Once I put a ton of discretion in my toy buying habits I found myself overly critical of things that in the past I would have just "impulse purchased" without a second thought. It also lets me be more appreciative of the things I do eventually buy. Before when I bought tons and tons of junk I'd just "throw it on the pile" or stick it in a display case and leave it... now I actually relish my few toy purchases and they give me more entertainment because I get to spend more time with them. I've also saved literally thousands upon thousands of dollars, which has enabled me to do other, larger things with my spare "pocket money" finances. It's quite shocking and depressing when you do a tally and realize just how much money you were pissing away on... well... "the same old" crap.

I've heard people saying October, but past iterations have taken about a year.

Brucie is actually Agent ONE... right down to the helicopter.

The police will actually "goose you" if you do semi-illegal things in their presence but not enough to warrant a pursuit. For instance, when I've run lights, cut people off or clipped pedestrians or cars in the presence of a roller, you'll actually here him chirp his siren at you kind of like a "warning". I've actually acclimated to the driving fairly well and I'm knife-edging and threading gaps all over the place... it's not uncommon for me to swerve around an intersection and clip a bumper or a curb with a cop around, they never give chase. Heck, I even waited until a bunch of people were around one of the street meat stands before shooting out it's propane tank, which blew it and them sky high... all I got was a siren chirp from a cop car.

I suppose the point is that MS is a trend kite. They want their console to have equal stance for everything "next gen". IMHO it's more marketing that it is an actual benefit to consumers.

I did a cursory glance the first time playing it and did not see any way to disable the depth or blur. They are probably hard-coded into the game engine to conserve level of detail over distance. The "game world" is smooth and free-spooling with no pauses or loading screens... I'd imagine that in order to maintain that there is a good deal of level of detail swapping in both geometry and textures which they hide using the depth of field effect.

I decided on the Xbox version. My reasons why were threefold: First, with all the "comparison footage" cropping up on launch day and shortly thereafter I personally could not see a difference between the two consoles, or at least not much of one to shift my favoritism between them. Part of this issue was also the seemingly rampant postings about the game locking up on 60gig PS3s (of which mine is). Sure it was mostly internet paranoia but it colored my initial opinion. Second, I like the Xbox controller. It's nice and big and meaty and fits my hands well. I have never liked the Playstation controller and have had hellish times using it, especially the new PS3 model. Personally I find it too small, too light and fumbly. Lastly, upon polling my office drones and other folks every single person I know in my "circle of gamer friends" who was getting this game was getting it for Xbox, which meant my online friends list and options for playing the game online was entirely Xbox. I have something in the nature of fifteen to twenty "friends" on Xbox and something like two or three on PS3. After playing the game for a few days on Xbox the load times are very short, the graphics (visual effects issues aside) are very good and I'm more or less satisfied with it. Edit: I would also point out that I am also eagerly awaiting the PC release simply to see if some of the "visual effects" that I'm not digging too much are handled better. For instance, the game employs dynamic shadowing, depth of field and motion blur. These three effects combined cause the game to have a sort of "blurry, hazy" look to it at times. I've gotten so used to crystal clear super sharp images on my TV that when I first played this game I kept thinking something was "wrong", that it was displaying at a lower resolution or something. It was only after playing for a while that it dawned on me the blurriness I was seeing was a very poorly aliased depth of field effect combined with motion blur and the usual grainy dynamic shadowing. I would imagine a good PC with a high end graphics card might clean up some of those issues.

After playing GTA4 for a few nights now it's clear to me that while on the surface it may appear that the game is "more of the same", this GTA is different. The broad scope of "commit crimes and run from the cops" is still present but it has an entirely new feel to it. There are equal parts "old" and equal parts "new"... while there is a familiarity to it, the guts and strategy of the game are quite different. Past GTA games always felt really "arcade-y" to me and very simplistic to downright corny in their missions and story. This GTA is different... it's like someone took the good aspects of the past games, polished them a bit more, weeded out some of the goofiness and cartooniness and pushed the franchise closer to a true "life of crime simulator" that mires itself in the hows and whys as well as the actual "acts" rather than being the simple "step and fetch" herky jerky presentation of past games. GTA4 looks different, it "handles" different, it's scripted different... the game is not "the same old" GTA. IMHO it is a true evolution of the genre and worthy of the "4". If you are "tired" of the "old" GTA, you should at least try this "new" GTA and see if you like it.

Another factor to keep in mind during this "Blu Ray price issue" should be that we are in the spring to summer slump right now. There pretty much aren't any decent quality offerings on Blu Ray coming out until this summer and the better releases are generally held off until closer to the holidays. Retailers think the same way... they hold back all their good deals and specials until there is some kind of "event" or season to encourage them to really push the format. Another sad truth of the matter is that many of the BOGO offers we have seen, even from day one, are usually on movies that nobody wants. Unless you're funny in the head I can't think of a single person who said to themselves "All right! If I buy Norbit on Blu Ray I can get Vin Diesel's XXX for FREE! Wooooooo!"... Nearly every single Amazon BOGO offer I've seen has been 75% shelf warmers with the odd good movie hiding in the list. For retailers, it's easy to crank out a BOGO offer on stock that isn't selling. Not only does it boost sales but it moves some stock that has been gathering dust. As for the whole "$40 MSRP" that has been around since day one. Not every Blu Ray has a MSRP of $40, only a few do, and that is nothing new. I paid $40 for my Simpsons movie Blu Ray and that was months ago back during the format war. Hell, I paid $40 for Hot Fuzz on HD DVD. A casual glance at the MSRPs of newly reviewed Blu Ray movies on High Def Digest shows me the following: Ocean's Eleven $29, First Sunday $39, PS I Love You $36, Sublime $29, First Knight $29, A Passage to India $29, National Treasure II $35... I see only one $40 disc (one that no one will probably buy on Blu Ray, indicating that it's price is probably driven by a small production run rather than it being a "quality" movie). The others will probably be retail priced around $25. National Treasure is a Disney release and every single Disney release since day one has been $35 MSRP, which usually translates to a $30 retail price. I paid $30 each for my Ratatouille and Cars Blu Rays but I have seen both advertised on sale for $20 on occasion. Then again on HDD.com they show Yukikaze for a paltry $150 MSRP on Blu Ray. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I see nothing different between now and months ago during the format war. Prices are not going up but they are not plummeting like a guy with a bad parachute either. This whole "ten dollar Blu Ray movies" thing will happen, just not for a while. As I've said before Blu Ray still has yet to shore up it's own format, once that is done and after the February '09 digital migration you will probably see BD market dominance creep higher and the prices creep lower. I still believe this whole thing will be so gradual, like the way DVD snuck up on us, that one day we will all wander into a store and notice Blu Ray is everywhere and DVD is relegated to a small rack in the back. But it will take years to get there, just as it did with DVD. Hell, DVD was an unchallenged format and I recall $40 DVD MSRPs for years after it's introduction.

GTA is an acquired taste to say the least. I know just as many people who love it as hate it. The "trick" with it is that it is both a run and run as well as a driving game so the controls have to bridge the two, which means in the past it has done both decently but neither spectacularly. I'm still on the fence. It's freaking launch day I'm still undecided. Reading the reviews they say both systems have equal graphical appearance but everyone keeps saying the "edge" graphics wise goes to the PS3 and most say the anti aliasing and pop in are much better on the PS3 than the Xbox. On the other hand the Xbox has the DLC and I'm more comfortable with that controller. I'm almost to the point of pulling a Duke and just saying F3ck it I'll wait and get it for PC... but sadly I'm a hardcore jonesing GTA addict and I simply must play this game sooner rather than later. Plus if you think the driving controls are bad with a controller, they are downright abysmal using a mouse and a keyboard.

I never got "into" San Andreas as much as I did Vice City... but I blame the '90s theme of the game. I was a teen in the '80s and a die hard Miami Vice fan so Vice City was a dream come true while San Andreas was a little too "thug life" for me. I'm now leaning towards the 360 version right now simply because I'm more comfortable with the 360 controller than the PS3 controller. I have heard rumors (most of which panned out to be fabrications) that the PS3 version has slightly better overall graphical performance but the 360 is getting two special DLC episodes (if the PS3 gets them or different ones is open to debate) plus the "achievements" (that I don't really care that much about).

I'm still trying to decide which version to buy, PS3 or Xbox360...

But that raises the question of "what is good?"... one person's good is not another person's good. And from my personal experience entertainment is one area in which there is no such animal as a "right" opinion of something. Everyone's opinion is valid related to their point of view. Others may disagree with that opinion but in the end it's nothing more than a difference of opinion... and what makes something "good" and another thing "bad" is simply a majority holding a similar opinion. Which then raises the whole "lemming" argument... do you force yourself to like something just because everyone else does? Do you convince yourself to hate something just because it seems it's the popular thing? IMHO (and as I am always want to say) the "problem" does not lie with the "hater" or the "lover" but rather with folks seeming inability to allow the perseverance of an opinion that differs from theirs. We are strange creatures in our need to be "right" and we will go to outrageous ends to "win" when our opinion is questioned. But there is no "winning" in a battle of opinion, no matter how much we convince ourselves otherwise. No amount of "proof" or "fact" will convince someone that their personal opinion of something is wrong, no matter what outrageous opinion they hold or what outrageous ends they go to to justify it. And it is these outrageous ends that create the "internet rabid fanboy reaction" this article talks about. You can bark and bark and bark at the dog on the other side of the fence but at the end of the day you both are still on your sides of the fence with no real change in anything.

Signed. But if we really want to stop him, you have to take out his financing... more precisely the strange German tax laws that enable him to get financing.

OK guys, not to sound like a jerk here but please stop reporting this USC Doorknob's posts. The staff have warned him and he is under watch. Hopefully he will not troll this thread any more... please continue the discussion at hand.